Sakai

Sakai is the new online environment designed to facilitate teaching, learning, and assessment at Notre Dame. The use of Sakai will enable sharing of knowledge and new models of collaboration within and across disciplines, at Notre Dame and beyond.

AFS Courseware

Notre Dame’s Courseware Service provides an alternative means for sharing files between faculty and students. By using the service, instructors can place files into directories and regulate how students access the files.

Features of the Courseware Service include:

Placement of files the students in your course can access. Your course folder will store 1GB of files.

Access from Windows, Macintosh, or Unix computers.

Access restricted to only the faculty member teaching the class, the students officially enrolled in the class, and other Notre Dame faculty, staff, or students the instructor specifically designates.

A dropbox where students may submit assignments.

For the most part, these features are all available in Sakai. However, Courseware is unique among similar solutions in that it allows execution of code from where it is stored. In essence, Courseware is an extension of Notre Dame's AFS cell that is automatically created for each course, but is only given quota by request.

Faculty must request classes and sections be activated and provided with a 1GB quota in order to use the service. Faculty members can submit this request using this online request form. (Click Quota and then click Request courseware activation). Allow two business days for activation. You will receive a notice when your Courseware space is ready for use.

You can access the Courseware space via WebFile from any web browser with an Internet connection. Alternatively, you can map a drive to Courseware using OpenAFS. You can find instructions for accessing Courseware under AFS at OpenAFS.

Course Mailing Lists (Acadlist)

Electronic mailing lists using LISTSERV® are automatically created for every section of every course at Notre Dame course and course section. Faculty and students can use these mailing lists for discussions, announcements, or other communication. When a message is posted to a course-related list, the server will check the class roster in real-time to obtain the email addresses of currentlyenrolled students and currently-assigned instructors for the specific course and section, and will then send the message to those addresses. As soon as the message is distributed, the list of recipient addresses is discarded until the next message is sent and then the process is repeated. As a result, a review of list membership will appear to have no subscribers because of this automated process.

The mailing list owner can manually add moderators and editors to the course, such as teaching assistants, but any subscribers that are manually added to the course will be automatically removed after a short period of time. Additional information and tools for course mailing lists are available here.

All list subscribers receive email that is addressed to the full name of the list, and any subscriber can send messages from their subscribed email address to the entire list. List owners, editors and moderators who are not subscribers to the list will not receive a copy of the messages that are sent.

To determine the mailing list address for your course, using the Kaneb Center Lookup Tool. All lists utilizing this service will include end in @acadlist.nd.edu.

Additionally, individuals can send messages to members of a course using tools in Sakai, or from Online Photo, which is integrated with the AcadList service. Online Photo is a channel available in insideND.

Additional Tools

Although Google Apps and Box are not automatically configured for use with ND courses to limit access to those registered for the class, you might find these tools very useful and can manage permissions yourself within those tools. You'll find additional info and comparisons under Shared File Space.

Remind101

Remind101 is a free service which allows faculty to send text messages to the students in their class. This service can help make sure that reminders and notifications don't get overlooked or missed by busy students with lots of email.

The service is completely private. Teachers never see students’ phone numbers. Students never see the ​ faculty member's​ phone number either​.

The system is easy to use. Students sign up by text, email, or online via the join pages.